


Coming to Terms

by PenguinofProse



Series: S4 Time Jump AUs [11]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Episode: s04e13 Praimfaya - Time Jump, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Enemies to Lovers, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:02:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25034392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenguinofProse/pseuds/PenguinofProse
Summary: Season 4 time jump AU. What if Octavia managed to get safely to the island and into space, while Clarke and Bellamy stayed in the bunker? How would their relationship change? Angst, more angst, some fluff, and a happy ending.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Series: S4 Time Jump AUs [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1764070
Comments: 46
Kudos: 195





	Coming to Terms

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome. Guess what? Here's another S4 time jump AU. I hope it distracts you from the pain of waiting for our faves to reunite in S7! Please note that there are some (consensual and non-violent) angry sex scenes in this. Huge thanks to Stormkpr for betaing as always. Happy reading!

Bellamy thinks fast, as he steps towards the radio. He needs to focus on the problem at hand, not get distracted by trying – and failing – to come to terms with the fact that this horrific decision was Clarke's idea.

Clarke, who he's been fast falling in love with since the day they first landed on this godforsaken planet.

He needs to concentrate on something more useful than that. He's heading for the radio, because Clarke has given him permission to say goodbye to his sister. But he's not interested in saying goodbye to her. He's determined to find a way to ensure that this _isn't_ goodbye, that Octavia lives to fight another day.

He wishes he had Clarke's tactical instincts, right now, or Raven's brain. There has to be a solution to this. What if Octavia could get to the island? There's a bunker there. She wouldn't have enough food to last very long, he realises, but it has to be better than nothing. It buys him a little time to work out what happens next – when the death wave is burnt out, could he break out of here and steal a rover and some hazmat suits and drive to rescue her? That is surely a more promising plan than trying to break down the door, now, when he is surrounded by armed guards.

Clarke would be proud of that plan, he thinks. Or at least, the Clarke he knew before today – the Clarke he _loved_ , before she betrayed his trust and locked his sister out.

It's not a very watertight plan, he has to admit. There are many things that could go wrong along the way. But as long as Octavia is still breathing, he will hold onto hope. It's always been like that – the sense that she is living on borrowed time, and he has to keep doing what he can to save her from the next twist of fate. This is how it was, when she went to lockup and he knew her days were numbered, but kept hoping until the bitter end.

He reaches for the radio, chooses his words carefully.

"O. Radio Monty. Get to the island. There's a bunker there where -"

He stops speaking abruptly, as Jaha reaches out towards him with a shock baton and the world turns dark.

…...

The hours that follow are some of the worst of Clarke's life – and that's saying something, given the last year has not exactly been a barrel of laughs.

She's so overwhelmed by distress she doesn't even know where to begin. She's worried about her mother, with the same headaches that will grow into the seizures that killed Raven. She's worried about Octavia, which is stupid, because she bears the responsibility for locking her out – but they were friends once. Maybe even yesterday. So it's hard to know she is dying, up there.

She's upset about Bellamy, too. Of course she is – he is essential to her, in a way no one else has ever been. And now he's locked up in a cell far below her, for the crime of loving his sister.

He has to be locked up. She knows it. He'd surely break down the door if he wasn't. But all the same, as images of him being shock-lashed flash before her eyes, she hates herself for agreeing to it.

Just for a moment, she allows herself to wonder whether Octavia did go away to the island like he told her to. If she did, then maybe he could be set free. Clarke likes that idea – she likes it a lot. She could go down to his cell, and open the door, and unlock his chains. Maybe he would be so grateful to her for freeing him that he would fall into her arms, and they would have a good long hug and he'd forgive her for doing what she had to do.

In her dreams.

She knows Bellamy's not like that. She knows he wouldn't put anything or anyone above his sister. And she knows, most of all, that he can hold a hurtful grudge. She saw that when she left after Mount Weather.

And that was nothing compared to this.

A crackle on the radio interrupts her rather negative train of thought.

"This is Octavia, calling the bunker. Is anyone there?"

Clarke sighs. She shouldn't answer. Answering would just be torture for both of them. She's caused herself and everyone around her enough pain in the last twenty-four hours already.

Surely one more wound can't hurt any worse than she's already hurting.

"Octavia. It's me. I'm sorry, but you know we can't open the -"

"That's not why I'm calling." Octavia cuts her off, sharp and direct. "We're going to space. We made it to the island. It's a long story. I just want to say goodbye to Bellamy."

"You're at the island?" Clarke cannot believe she actually went through with it.

"Yeah. Look, here's Raven. To prove to you this isn't some conspiracy to breach your precious bunker." Clarke reckons she probably deserves the venom in Octavia's tone.

"Clarke. It's me." Raven's much-missed voice sounds over the radio. "I figured out how to cure the seizures. You need to tell Abby and Jackson – an ice bath, then restart the heart."

"Ice bath and restart the heart." She repeats back, shocked. "You're – you're alive."

"I am. At least until this rocket explodes on take-off."

"It won't -"

"Are you going to let me say goodbye to my brother or not?" Octavia interrupts.

Clarke pauses. Octavia really isn't at the door – so much is clear. That means there should be no danger in letting Bellamy speak to her. And maybe, an inappropriately optimistic little voice in the back of her mind suggests, letting them say goodbye could be a kind of peace gesture. It could be the first step on the long road to reconciliation.

"I'll send Miller to find him." She concedes, setting down the radio.

…...

Bellamy is furious. Obviously. Also anxious, and overwhelmed with guilt that he has failed in his duty to protect his sister.

Those emotions make sense, he figures.

But he is also, irrationally, absolutely devastated. He's distraught to find out that Clarke is not the person he thought she was. Sure, she has always been one for putting the common good above individual preference. But he always believed she was a genuinely warm person, underneath all that. He thought she was kind, and loving, despite that cold mask she sometimes has to don in the course of leadership.

He thought she cared about Octavia – and him – more than this.

So it is that he sits here, head resting in his chained hands, and grieves the end of a relationship that never truly got off the ground in the first place. It sucks, he learns rather abruptly, to realise that the person he would have given his life for in a heartbeat will not even open a door for his sake.

He hates sitting here and wallowing like this, but he doesn't see what else there is to be done. If Octavia followed the instructions in his garbled message, she should be on her way to temporary safety by now. All he can do is stay put, and pretend obedience, and bide his time until he can take those hazmat suits and the rover and go rescue her.

All he can do, it seems, is cry useless tears.

He wipes his eyes in a hurry when he hears noises at the door. He still looks a bit of a wreck, he suspects, but when the door opens to reveal Miller he decides that's not such a problem. Miller has seen worse since they came to the ground.

Before he can quite work out what's going on, Miller is unchaining his wrists.

"What's this?" He asks, confused.

"You're free." Miller shrugs. "Clarke summoned you to her office. _The_ office. You know – from earlier." He looks uncomfortable. "Anyway, Octavia went to the island. She's on the radio right now – Clarke said you can go talk to her."

"Does Jaha know about this?" He asks, even as he gets to his feet and starts jogging eagerly to the stairs.

"No idea. It looks like Clarke's in charge anyway."

Yes, Bellamy muses. That does seem to be how things have turned out.

He makes it to the office quickly, not stopping to question his relative good fortune. Sure, it's hardly positive news that his sister is out there with the death wave approaching, but if she's made it to the island and is radioing him and he's no longer locked up, that's a substantial improvement on recent hours.

"Bellamy. Hey." Clarke greets him, but he ignores her.

He simply strides over to the radio.

"O?"

"Bell. Hey." He sighs in relief. His sister is still alive – for now. "I wanted to say goodbye to you."

"This is not goodbye." He bites out the words, resolutely ignoring the way Clarke hovers, frowning, on the edge of his field of vision.

"It is for now. We're going to space, Bell. Raven thinks it'll work – we're taking Becca's old rocket." That sucks the air from his lungs.

"You can't be serious."

"I am. We're doing it. Me, Raven, Kane, Indra, Gaia, Monty and Harper." She reels off, sounding almost enthusiastic about the idea, he thinks.

"You want this?"

"It's better than dying on the ground."

"You shouldn't be on the ground anyway." He bites out, angry. "You should be in here -"

"Bell. Stop. I don't want to waste time on that. I want to say goodbye. I want to tell you I love you."

He pauses, swallows. Closes his eyes, and summons up the words. Just his luck – that he finally finds the courage to tell his sister he loves her, just as the world is ending.

"I love you too, O."

She never replies. The line is dead.

…...

Clarke approaches Bellamy cautiously, as he sits slumped over the silent radio.

"At least you got to say goodbye." She offers – a tentative, empty platitude.

He ignores her, getting to his feet, face rigid, stance tense. "What are my orders?" He asks, voice cold.

"Orders?" She echoes, confused.

"Orders. Aren't you in charge now?"

"Bellamy -"

"What are my orders?" He repeats the question, oblivious to the tears flooding her eyes.

"I don't – it's not like that." She lies, because that's what she's really scared of. She's becoming afraid that, maybe, it _is_ like that, since she ordered that door to be closed.

He doesn't say anything, still standing there, frozen.

"You could go choose your room and get settled in." She says, trying to phrase it as a suggestion rather than an instruction.

He nods, firm, wordless.

"I'll let you know if there are any more messages from Octavia."

Another cold nod, and he is gone.

…...

Bellamy chooses a room with Jackson and Miller.

No, that's not quite right. Miller chooses that room for him, rightly sensing that he's not really in any state to be making decisions, right now.

His head's a bit of a mess at the moment, to be honest. Octavia isn't dead yet, at least, but she's far from safe. He supposes that's more or less been her status since the moment she was born. That thought ought to be comforting, but somehow, it isn't.

He doesn't know what to make of Clarke. Why did he ever fall for such an unfeeling monster? Who does she think she is, ruling the world and making all these life and death decisions? And how is it that, even whilst she's becoming this monster, she can still look at him with those soft eyes and tell him that she'll let him know if there are any more messages from Octavia?

There won't be any more messages from Octavia, he figures. The radio cut out, and he doesn't imagine it'll come back to life. But he's not going to go checking, because based on the way Clarke has behaved today, he begins to suspect he wouldn't be allowed in that office even if he wanted to.

…...

Clarke chooses to room alone. She thinks she deserves that – it was her idea to take the bunker and lock everyone out, leaving it substantially below capacity. So it serves her right that she will spend the next five years lonely, in a dorm shared only with ghosts.

She invites Niylah over for some company that evening. _Company_ is an obvious euphemism. She invites Niylah over to fuck her with her fingers so hard she can barely remember what she's done. But when she comes down from her orgasm she remembers it all over again, feels it rush back into her mind like a blow to the head.

She doesn't invite Niylah to share the room with her.

She almost _wants_ to be alone, now she thinks of it. She almost relishes the pain of her loneliness, because it reminds her what she has had to do.

It reminds her that she will bear it, so that nobody else has to.

…...

Bellamy is lonely for the first time in his life. That's silly, of course, because he grew up in a household of three, but it is different sharing with Miller and Jackson now. They are not his family in the same way that his mother and sister were. And they are happily in love, both too close to each other to be truly close to him.

That's what he misses, about things being right with Clarke. He misses the feeling that they were each other's _person_ , each other's first port of call for shelter in a storm. But however much he might miss her, he cannot forgive and forget the way that she put his sister in danger.

Almost as much as that, he cannot forgive and forget the way she disregarded their relationship by doing that. If she cared about him anywhere near as much as he cared about her, he's pretty sure she shouldn't have been able to go through with hurting him so badly.

"You doing OK, Bellamy?" Miller asks him one morning, when he takes a moment too long to gather his courage and get out of bed to face the day.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."

"I'm here if you need to talk about your sister or whatever." Miller struggles through the words, visibly uncomfortable, eyes on the floor.

Bellamy thanks him, but he has no intention of ever taking him up on the offer. He doesn't want to talk to Miller. He wants to talk to Octavia, if she's even still alive.

He wants to talk to Clarke – the Clarke he thought he knew, before she locked that door.

…...

Clarke has been trying to talk to Octavia. She figures that, if she succeeds, that will be the perfect way to start patching things up with Bellamy. So it is that she spends several minutes a day trying to get through on the radio or the lazer-comm. If she had her way, she'd spend hours on this task. She's worried about Octavia for her own sake, but she is also desperate to find a way to move past the horrific coldness between herself and Bellamy. He can scarcely even bring himself to look at her when they pass in the hallways, and it hurts. It hurts because she used to think he would stay by her side through anything.

She doesn't have time to spend hours on it, though, because she has too much else to do. Everyone in the bunker has to do a couple of hours a day of physical training to keep fit and ready for life on the ground, and as their de facto leader, she knows she cannot be seen to shirk that. And then she has her hands more than full keeping this place running, organising rations and supplies, even helping out in med bay when they are short-staffed.

"We should head to lunch." Abby suggests, breaking Clarke's train of thought.

"I haven't got time." She dismisses the idea, returning to the engineering report in front of her.

"Clarke, honey. It's important. You need to eat. Whatever you have there, I'm sure Thelonius or I can deal with it."

They can't. Not because they're not capable, but because this is Clarke's burden to bear.

…...

Bellamy cannot help but wonder what Clarke does all day. Whenever he sees her, she looks absolutely exhausted, dark circles under her eyes that defy belief.

Not that he's looking, of course. Not that he cares whether she sleeps at night.

Anyway, she looks shattered, but he cannot see why. As far as he can tell, all she does is sit around in that office giving orders. Sometimes he sees her when they have the same training session, but that's not very often. So what on Earth is keeping her so busy?

For his part, he's doing a real job, not just bossing people around from a big leather chair. He's been allocated to teach in the small school they have set up down here. It's interesting work, and he likes children, but it's tiring. He's with the kids all day, then he goes to his training session. Then he sits up late into the night with his planning and grading.

And when there is neither planning nor grading to be done, he sits up late into the night just worrying about his sister.

…...

Clarke is nervous, when the day of her mother's ice bath treatment arrives. She knows that Jackson is a most capable doctor and that her mother is in safe hands. But she cannot help but worry all the same.

If she loses her mother, she'll have no one. That's the thought which is stuck in her mind, growing louder and louder in her internal monologue until there is no room for anything else. She lost her father. She lost Wells, Finn, Lexa. And then she lost Bellamy. If she loses her mother, she really will have only ghosts for company.

Well, ghosts and a man who is barely speaking to her.

"I'll be OK." Abby assures her, as she prepares for the procedure.

"Yeah." Clarke swallows, has a go at a little honesty. Allows herself, just for a heartbeat, a moment of weakness. "I'm just scared. I don't want to be alone."

"Clarke, you'll never be alone. Whatever happens to me, you know you have Jackson and Miller and Bellamy."

Clarke laughs. She cannot help it. Jackson is her mother's friend, not hers. She grew up on the same station as Miller, but they've never been close.

She loves Bellamy more than she has ever loved anyone else in her life, but he looks at her like she's dirt on his boot.

…...

Bellamy feels a little self-conscious, asking after Abby's health. He does it anyway. Just because he's angry with Clarke doesn't mean he doesn't want Abby to be fit and healthy.

He wouldn't wish a dead mother on anybody.

"How did it go?" He asks Jackson, when he gets home from med bay that night.

"Great. No problems at all. She's the picture of health."

"That's good."

"Yeah. She's a great doctor. We'd be lost without her."

That's not exactly why Bellamy thinks it's good news, but he cannot correct Jackson without admitting something he's not ready to admit even to himself.

…...

Clarke has been trying to contact the group she hopes are in space for several months when she eventually succeeds.

"Clarke?" That is Raven's voice, echoing over the lazer-comm.

"Raven. Thank God. Are you on the Ring? Did it work?"

"Slow down, Clarke." A slight laugh. "It worked. We're all OK so far."

"Great." She runs out of steam, then, not sure what else to say to the old friend she essentially left for dead.

Raven helps her out, thank goodness. "Shall I get Kane? Abby must want to speak to him."

"Can you get Octavia first? I think Bellamy should get to talk to her before I fetch my mum."

She tells herself she's doing that for the right reasons. It's not because she doesn't care about Kane or her mother, nor because she is grovelling at Bellamy's feet.

She just thinks that, in a world where they fell out over his sister's fate, maybe going out of her way to show she cares about his relationship with his sister might be her best way of setting things right.

…...

Bellamy is half way through an Earth Skills lesson when Miller bursts into his classroom.

"Clarke sent for you. She managed to get through to Octavia on the lazer-comm."

He gapes, stunned. He wants to sprint down the hallways towards the sound of his sister's voice, but he cannot do that. He has a responsibility to these children, now, and unlike some people, he cares deeply about the wellbeing of those he is supposed to look out for.

"I'll go when I've finished my lesson." He forces the words past his teeth.

Miller looks flabbergasted. "Are you out of your mind? I'll teach them about snares or whatever for a bit. Go speak to Octavia."

"You sure?" He tries very hard not to break into a run until he hears Miller confirm it.

"Sure."

With that he is going, heading towards Clarke's office with all the speed he can muster. He arrives to the sound of her voice – and to the sound of her _laughter_ , for the first time since she locked that door, he's pretty sure. She's speaking to Monty, and she doesn't see him right away.

He can tell the exact moment that she notices he is there. She cuts herself off, half way through a sentence, the laughter dying in her eyes and the smile sliding from her lips.

"Monty. I have to go. Bellamy's here for Octavia now."

With that, she stands up and races from the room. That's just as well, he thinks. If she hung around, he fears he might almost be tempted to thank her.

...

Clarke wonders if things will be OK, now. Bellamy knows his sister is alive, and knows that Clarke wants to do things to make him happier like put him first in the queue for the lazer-comm. She realises that can hardly make up for leaving his sister out to die in the first place, but she hopes it might be better than nothing. Maybe they could at least return to polite civility, even if he will never smile at her again quite like he used to.

With that in mind, she decides to try for a little reconciliation. She resolves one morning to sit with Bellamy, Miller and Jackson at breakfast.

"Hey guys. How are you doing?" She asks, trying to look cheerful but not insensitively perky as she takes the vacant seat opposite Bellamy.

"We're good." Miller offers, when it becomes clear that Bellamy has no intention of replying.

"Great. Did I see some of you guys in the same training session as me yesterday? That was a tough one, wasn't it?" She asks, desperate for some neutral topic to sustain the conversation.

Bellamy shrugs. Jackson shakes his head no, which is hardly surprising given Clarke knows full well he was on duty in med bay. Miller offers a couple of words of mild agreement.

Right. No. Clearly neutral topics are not going to get her anywhere.

"How's Octavia, Bellamy?" She asks outright.

"She's fine. No thanks to you." He bites the words out.

His breakfast less than half eaten, he gets to his feet and walks right out of the canteen.

…...

Bellamy doesn't understand why Clarke is still trying. Doesn't she get it? Doesn't she understand that he's furious with her, that he cannot forgive her, that he cannot overlook her condemning his sister to death?

And it's not just that. He cannot cannot make sense of the idea that Clarke would betray him, cannot come to terms with the knowledge that Clarke would hurt him so badly. Clarke – who he thought might be the love of his life, once upon a time.

She sits with him at breakfast at least twice a week, since they first got through on the lazer-comm. It's been months, now, and she's still at it, even though he stands up and leaves before he's finished eating more often than not.

He can't help it. It just hurts when she tries to act normal, when she inquires after Octavia's health or tries to ask what his lessons have been like at the school. It hurts because it reminds him of the caring relationship they used to have before the death wave.

It hurts, because it reminds him why he used to love her.

…...

Clarke sighs in frustration when she hears the lazer-comm crackle to life. She's happy for all those who have loved ones in the sky, of course, and she enjoys speaking to Monty and Harper herself from time to time. It eases a little of her loneliness. But this is probably Octavia trying to talk to Bellamy – it usually is – and that means she will have to clear out of her own office if she is to avoid an awkward scene.

She scoops up a sheaf of papers, tucks her data pad under her arm, and is half way to the door to send for Bellamy when she hears something that surprises her.

"Clarke?" Octavia asks, using her actual name rather than getting straight on and asking for Bellamy.

She turns back and picks up the handset. "Yeah, it's me. Let me send for your brother."

"No. It's you I want to talk to."

Clarke falls to her butt in the nearest chair, over half way to panicking. Why would Octavia want to talk to her? What can she have to say to her, besides endless criticisms of her doing what she genuinely believed she had to do for her people?

"Clarke?" Octavia prompts her, sounding rather less annoyed than Clarke would expect.

"Sorry. I'm here. What did you want to say to me?"

Octavia laughs. Now that's unexpected. "Nothing particular. I just wanted to _talk_ to you, Clarke. You know – have a chat."

"A chat?" That sounds implausible at best.

"A chat. I – I know things aren't great between you and my brother right now. I wanted you to know that I don't hold it against you, what you did."

"You don't?" Clarke squeaks, shocked, wondering whether this is some kind of trick or perhaps a dream.

"No." Octavia takes an audible breath. "I've been here a year, now. That's longer than we even knew each other on the ground, you and me. I've had a lot of time to think. I guess – I've found some peace here."

"I'm happy for you." Clarke says, because honestly, she is. Or at least, she will be, just as soon as she can summon the energy to be happy about anything.

Octavia continues to explain her unexpected friendliness. "Space didn't feel like home before. But it does, now. I have a family here, and I help Monty with the algae farm. It's _nice_ , you know?"

Clarke hums. She doesn't see how an algae farm and a pleasant life could lead to improbable forgiveness.

"My brother talks about you a lot, for someone who claims to hate you. And I get all these clues that you're still looking out for him. It's obvious in everything he says – he'll complain about you summoning him from his lessons all the time to speak to me, but it's so obvious you're just trying to show him you care."

"It is?" She wonders whether she ought to be more subtle.

"It is to me. I've been wondering about trying to speak to you for a while but you always seem to disappear when you think I want to speak to Bellamy."

"Sorry."

"Don't apologise. Just – we should talk sometimes too, I think."

"I'd like that."

By the time they conclude their conversation, Clarke even finds that she is smiling.

…...

Bellamy is rather taken aback by his sister's choice of topic, the next time they talk on the lazer-comm.

"I spoke with Clarke." She declares, out of the blue.

He snorts a little. He's not here to talk about Clarke – or at least, he's only here to talk about Clarke if he's venting about how angry he is with her.

"You should forgive her." Octavia recommends.

"Not likely." He gets the words out, short and sharp.

"Bell, please. I know it sounds frightening but you have to give her another chance. She cares about you so much." Octavia sounds _tearful_ , and that confuses him. "She was good for you, even if I didn't really see it until it was too late. She was so damn good for you. And you must know she'd do anything for you."

"Anything except open that door." He snarls.

It will always come back to that.

…...

Clarke still invites Niylah over every now and then. It's better than being always alone but leaves her unsatisfied, somehow, no matter how many or how strong the orgasms. And that's unfortunate, because Niylah does everything right. Clarke has been sleeping with her longer than she has ever slept with anyone else in her life – they know how to push each other's buttons, and Niylah is not stingy with her time or attention.

In short, Niylah is a beautiful and generous and considerate lover.

But she's not Bellamy.

…...

Bellamy thinks nothing of it when the whole population of the bunker is summoned to a meeting in the atrium. This happens, sometimes. Mostly when Clarke thinks that spirits are flagging and she needs to give them a bright little pep talk that he can tell she doesn't mean a word of.

This time it is worse than that.

He cannot quite take it in as he stands there and listens to her tell them that they are in genuine danger of starving to death.

"We've done the calculations and we have just enough soy protein stockpiled to pull through." She explains to the shocked crowd. "We are asking you all, please, to work with us to survive this. We will need everyone to eat exactly their own assigned protein portion – no more, no less. Do not share your protein portion with your friends or family. Do not even give it to your children. If you eat exactly what you are served we will survive until the soybean crop flourishes again."

It's lucky they have some soy protein stockpiled, Bellamy muses sourly. It's lucky that the bunker is below capacity by enough to have allowed them to stockpile, since Clarke locked out so many of those who should have survived.

He tries to keep feeling sour as Clarke takes questions from the crowd, but it's a challenge. He keeps being distracted by noticing just how tired and stressed she looks.

…...

Clarke knew the stricter protein rations would not be popular, but she didn't think they would be hated quite this much. Do these people not understand that she is trying to save them? Can they not see that the harsh rules are there to protect them?

Maybe that's how it started out on the Ark, she muses.

She is ambushed at supper that evening. There is no other way to look at it. She gets in the queue, ostensibly grateful for her personal calculated portion of protein. She knows that she needs to be seen to be doing the right thing.

But before she can take her tray to a table and eat, a crowd converges on her. An angry man with blond hair starts shouting to those around him, trying to rouse up their anger and make her feel threatened.

"Rationing, huh? I say we don't need rationing. I say we'd have more than enough if we weren't feeding the likes of you!"

As he points a finger at her, the crowd jeers.

Emboldened, her critic continues. "We don't need politicians like you to sit on their backsides all day while we do the real work. Screw you, and screw Jaha, and screw all your kind. I say we float you, and eat your share!"

Clarke tries to flee, but there is no way out. The circle of angry rebels is tight around her, closing in all the time.

And then, all at once, the circle is broken, and Bellamy is pushing his way through to her.

"You're wrong." He informs the crowd mildly, scarcely needing to raise his voice for it to carry to the stunned onlookers. "We need strong leadership. Clarke works phenomenally hard – but you don't see it, because she works on keeping things running smoothly behind the scenes. She works longer hours than any of us, keeping us safe from disasters like the soybean famine. We're lucky that she has figured out how to save us. If we keep to our assigned rations, we'll all eat like kings when we're above ground again."

There is a beat of silence. And then, at the edge of the circle, a man in a guard's uniform nods. That makes sense, Clarke figures – Bellamy is still well-respected by the guards. That man's neighbour starts nodding, too, then a nearby woman voices her agreement.

Before Clarke knows it, the blond who started the attack is gone, and the crowd are applauding Bellamy's words.

She can't believe it. It's not the power he has over a crowd that she has trouble comprehending – he's always had that skill, since the day the dropship first landed. It's the fact that he would waste his words on standing up for her, when she was so sure he loathed her and their relationship was beyond repair.

"Thank you." She mutters to him, still clutching her tray.

He looks at her, sharp and not at all kind. "I didn't do it for you. I did it because keeping you alive is our best hope of surviving."

…...

Bellamy knows it's only a matter of time before someone asks him why he stood up for Clarke in the dining hall. Unsurprisingly, it is Miller who brings it up, when he returns to the dorm that night.

"Bellamy. Hey. I heard about what happened in the dining room."

Of course he did. Bellamy only shrugs.

"It's good to see you and Clarke doing better."

"We're not _doing better_." He snaps. "I'm just trying to keep us all alive. We need her." He tries not to remember saying that once before, with a stab wound to the leg and worry in his heart.

"Bellamy -"

"No. I didn't do it out of friendship. I did it because I want to live long enough to see my sister again."

If he keeps telling himself that, sooner or later he might start to believe it's the truth.

…...

Clarke is tired. She's tired of being tired. And she's stressed out beyond bearing by the demands of trying to keep all these people alive in the midst of a soybean famine.

In the thick of that, Bellamy stepping forward to speak up and protect her has established itself as the highlight of her year. She knows that's stupid, when he still detests her, when he wasn't doing it for her. But it's still better than him not doing it at all.

She's lonely, too. She has her mum, of course, but she spends a great deal of time talking to Kane on the lazer-comm and the rest of her waking hours in med bay. She talks to Murphy and Emori occasionally, and Jackson. That's awkward, though, because he lives with Bellamy and Miller, and Clarke cannot help but think that his loyalty to his boyfriend and his roommate seems to be winning out over his old friendship with the Griffin family, these days.

That's hardly surprising, she muses. They've been down here a long two years, now.

She has Niylah, as well, but she's stopped sleeping with her. There's simply no point in pretending any more that it works for either of them. Niylah deserves better, Clarke thinks, than to be the person she only ever screws when she's fighting to fall out of love with someone else.

It's a fight she suspects she may never win.

…...

Bellamy is in an impossible situation, and he hates it. He's lonely – not just starved for company, but starved for _affection_. Desperate to feel loved and valued for who he is, not what he does. But he doesn't want a relationship, isn't interested in going down to the rec room and loitering until he finds someone he can persuade himself to fall in love with.

Clarke has taught him that love is messy and frightening and, ultimately, a recipe for disappointment.

Miller and Jackson are in love, of course, and that's just great. He's happy for them. Really he is. But they're _ostentatiously_ in love, somehow, he cannot help but feel. He just wishes they could be a bit more subtle in their joy.

There are other impracticalities to sharing a room with a happy couple, of course. They have a bit of system going, now, over two years in, to ensure that Miller and Jackson get some private time together. A couple of times a week, Bellamy will leave them to have the room to themselves, and he will go jerk off in the nearby shower.

It sucks. It really does. It makes him feel lonely and a little sleazy, and it makes him feel even more unloved.

But the worst thing of all is that he still sees Clarke's face, when he closes his eyes. He still imagines her here, with him, grinning up at him, hair wet from the shower, making him feel human once again.

He's still stuck on her, even after everything she's done.

…...

Clarke is still stuck on Bellamy, even after all this time. It makes her feel a little pathetic, but she's not sure what else to do but love him. She doesn't seem to be much good at anything else. It's silly, of course, because he hasn't had a kind word for her in years. But she can see that he's still the same warm-hearted guy she first fell for. It shines through in his work in the school, in the friendship he shares with Miller, in how seriously he takes his duty to be a good citizen of the bunker.

She's still trying to find ways to get through to him, little peace gestures that she hopes might win him over. One morning, for example, she approaches him at breakfast to tell him about some changes to the school curriculum.

"We've decided they shouldn't only learn Earth Skills." She explains, choosing to make it sound like a group decision when really she is the only person who decides anything much, around here, these days. "They need some sense of their history and culture as well, some literature. So we've put the Iliad on the curriculum."

"The Iliad." He repeats back, monotone.

"The Iliad. I thought you might like to teach that." She ventures, biting her lip.

"Don't you think we should teach them something other than fighting?" He asks, apparently annoyed.

"You like the Iliad." She repeats, wondering how this conversation has got away from her, as every conversation they have seems to do, since she ordered that door to be locked.

"I used to like the Iliad. Before I realised there ought to be more to life than war and killing." He bites out, harsh. "Why are you writing the school curriculum anyway? You're not the Chancellor."

She laughs. She cannot help it. Jaha is the Chancellor, technically, but Clarke is all too aware that she has ended up in charge whether she likes it or not.

…...

Bellamy hasn't quite got over the Iliad incident when Miller corners him the following morning. It was an obvious move on Clarke's part, he cannot help but feel. It was a very transparent way of fishing for his goodwill and trying to start a friendly conversation.

He should have just let her have it. If he was kind to her, she might have smiled at him, and at least that would have given him something to think of next time he takes a lonely shower.

If he was kind to her a bit more often, maybe she might look less _weary_.

"Bellamy, what's up?" Miller asks, as subtle as he ever is.

"Nothing."

Miller ignores him, and gets to the point. "Look, I was going through the supply closet on floor seven the other day. Found a whole lot of coloured pencils. You need any for the school?"

"It's not really a coloured pencil kind of school." He wonders if it might be more that kind of place, if only he let Clarke have her way with a more diverse and interesting curriculum.

"There are loads of them." Miller repeats, shoving a box of them into his hands. "Look, take some."

"I don't want them." He pushes them back to Miller. "I don't need them. Give them to Clarke – it's her birthday soon."

He almost doesn't realise his mistake. That's the worst thing of all. He only notices that he has slipped up and revealed that he still thinks about her when he sees the loaded look Miller is giving him.

"I mean – I think it's her birthday. I don't really remember." It's a lie, and Miller knows it is a lie. He's just making this even worse.

"Bellamy -"

"No. Just – don't. Give her the damn pencils, Miller. God knows she looks like she could use something fun to do."

"You're crap at hating her." Miller informs him dispassionately.

Bellamy sighs and rubs a hand across his eyes. "I know."

…...

Clarke is beginning to understand why she is feeling so empty all the time, why she is exhausted even when she manages to grab a decent night's sleep. It's because it wasn't supposed to be like this – she can see it, now. Every time Bellamy rejects another attempt at reconciliation, she becomes more convinced of it. It's not working for her, because she was never made to lead alone.

She was made to lead with him at her side.

She tries to do something about it, once she reaches that conclusion. Rather than empty overtures of friendship, she has a go at starting more useful conversations with him. Conversations about leadership – the kinds of issues they used to discuss all the time, in another life, above ground.

"Do you think we should stop rationing protein?" She asks him over breakfast one day.

"What?"

"Protein rationing. I told you the other day – the soybean crops are fine. Should we keep rationing protein so we can stockpile in case it happens again, or would it be good for morale to be more generous with it?"

"I don't know. I haven't thought about it." He is looking at her as if she has lost her head completely.

Sometimes, she wonders if she has. She knows she's definitely misplaced her heart.

"I know. But think about it now." She requests, over half way to begging.

He does. He actually does think about it, frowning deeply. "I think you should find a compromise." He says eventually. "Keep rationing for now, but tell the people you'll ease it once you've stockpiled a couple of months' supply. And keep them informed – that was good, when you first announced the rationing, how you were so honest with everyone about the situation."

"That was good? That one guy was ready to float me?"

"One guy. Out of four hundred. You're doing OK here, Clarke."

That's the kindest thing he's said to her in three years, and it brings tears to her eyes which she doesn't even try to hide.

…...

Bellamy seems to have warmed up to Clarke, the last couple of months, almost by accident. Damn her for asking him interesting questions about how to run this place. Damn her for looking at him with respect in her eyes.

He decides to ask Octavia about it, in the end. Somehow that feels safer than talking to Miller or Jackson who are right there. The thousands of miles between them gives the illusion that his sister might be more of an objective observer.

No, that's complete trash. Octavia has always been biased, always had strong opinions.

A teeny tiny bit of his heart wonders if maybe that's why he wants to ask her. Maybe he wants to have this conversation with someone who is firmly in favour of him fixing things with Clarke. Maybe he's hoping to be given her _permission_ , or something.

"I don't know what to do, O." He laments, one evening, when Clarke has closed the door of her office behind her and is safely out of earshot. It's weird to be asking his little sister for advice, but if it makes him feel less confused, it'll be worth it.

"About what?"

"Clarke. I – she keeps talking to me."

"She does that. She talks to me, too." She reminds him.

He chooses to ignore her. He doesn't need that reminder right now. "I mean, _really_ talking to me. She asked my opinion about the guard schedules the other day."

"You used to be a guard."

"OK, fair enough. She asked me about the engineering apprentices. That was weird."

"She respects your opinion." Octavia says.

That's what he was worried about. Respecting his opinion is half way back to picking up where they left off, he cannot help but feel. And that sounds frankly terrifying, now that he knows she has the power to hurt him so deeply.

"I don't know what to do about it. I don't know if I want her to be talking to me like this. What – what do you think?"

Octavia snorts. "You know what I think. I think she loves you. She's told me a lot of things over the radio these last couple of years, Bell. She told me about trading those places in Arkadia for your safety. She told me about you two putting each other's names on that list."

"That was years ago."

"Nothing's changed."

" _Everything_ 's changed." He bites out.

"Things have _happened_ , not changed." Octavia corrects him, sharp. "She's still got the weight of the world on her shoulders. She'd still drop all her responsibilities in a moment to save you."

"She didn't save you, though." He points out, because really, it will always come back to that.

"But I survived. I'm fine, and I'm happy, and I've forgiven her."

"It's not as simple as that. It's not just about her putting your life in danger. It's about how – that showed me that she wasn't who I thought she was."

"I disagree. That's exactly who she always was, and you know it. She made an impossible choice, even though it hurt her, and then she wrapped that choice up as kindly as she could. She let you say goodbye. She let you go free as soon as it was safe. She's been working every day since then to show you she's not a monster."

The moment she says that, something changes. He can't put his finger on what it is, exactly. It's not as if he suddenly forgives Clarke, or falls back in love with her, or even understands why she did what she did.

But there's a bright little voice in the back of his mind suggesting that, maybe, he might be able to do all those things and more, one day.

…...

Clarke is at a seriously low ebb. She's somehow feeling even lonelier now she has started trying to set things right with Bellamy. Every time he answers one of her little questions about how things should be done round here, it's like a punch to the gut. There's something about the fact she actually has to ask, rather than him volunteering like he used to, that has her genuinely tempted to give in and admit defeat, for the first time in the three years they've been down here.

She's staring blankly at a data pad, trying to make sense of the state of the oxygen scrubbers, when Murphy tumbles through the door of her office.

"They need you in med bay. Bellamy had an accident at training."

If she thought she felt low before, it is nothing compared with the despair she feels now. Horrific images flash before her eyes, of Bellamy bleeding out on the cold tiled floor of med bay before she ever gets the chance to earn his forgiveness.

She drops the data pad to her desk with a loud smack, and runs straight out the door.

…...

Bellamy doesn't understand why Miller's dad sent him here. His wrist hurts, sure, but it doesn't hurt _badly_. He's convinced he could have finished the session without any trouble and stopped by here later.

But as it is, Miller senior was not to be denied, and so Bellamy finds himself sitting in consultation room three and feeling rather bored.

He's been there perhaps ten minutes when Clarke sprints through the door, breathing heavily, with a horror-struck expression on her face.

Then she sees him and relaxes, breathing an audible sigh, positively wilting in relief. "You're OK." She gasps out, for good measure.

Well, then. This is an interesting development.

"Yeah. Sorry if I disturbed you. I thought it could wait but -"

"No. No, it's fine. I'm just happy to see you're still breathing." She doesn't even seem to be joking, as she closes the door behind her and approaches him.

"I'm fine. Just landed funny on my wrist."

She nods and sets to work, prodding at his swollen wrist with gentle fingers, running her thumb over his skin and exploring the injury in rather more detail than he thinks can possibly be necessary.

He's not complaining. It is literally years since anyone has touched him. And he knows that it's pathetic and rather creepy that he's even vaguely getting off on his former friend giving him first aid, but somehow, he is powerless to stop.

She declares it sprained, not broken, and sets about wrapping it up for support. She's bending close to him as she works, peering carefully at the bandages as she winds them around the injury, leaning ever nearer to him as she seeks the perfect angle to see what she's doing.

He's staring at her lips. He can't help it. He hasn't been this close to her in years, and although she looks a decade older and a lifetime tireder, he is pleased to note that, somehow, she still smells the same.

"All done." She murmurs, peering up at him with the barest hint of a smile.

No. No, she can't be done. If she's done then she'll leave.

If she's done then she'll stop touching him.

Without pausing to analyse all of the ways in which it is a phenomenally bad idea, he surges forwards in his chair to kiss her. He presses his mouth to hers, slightly too firm, slightly too demanding. He's angry with her, and he wants her to know it, but damn it – she's _Clarke_. He needs this like he needs air to breathe.

She kisses him back. That's the miracle of it – three years and a whole lot of strained silence lie between them, and she kisses him back, hot and eager, too wet, too much teeth, too good to be true. She's moaning into his mouth, a sound somewhere between anguish and want that he cannot help feel describes the current state of their relationship perfectly.

He stands up, presses her back against the nearby table. The pressure of her hips against his is exquisite, and he tangles a hand in her hair, desperate to have her even closer, determined never to let go of her again.

That's when it happens. That's when she gives a little cry that is more pain than pleasure, and he pulls away in startled horror.

He can't hurt her. He would never mean to hurt her. However furious he might be, he could never stand to hurt her.

"I'm sorry." He says, starting to back away.

She doesn't let him go. She still has her arms tight around him, holding him against her. She rubs her hips up against his, sending a jolt of arousal through his cock.

"Clarke -"

" _Please_." She groans, one little word, laden with everything that has gone wrong between them.

"Clarke -" He tries again.

"Just this one time. Please, Bellamy. _Please_."

Well, then. If she's going to beg him like that, he's not going to be the one to say no.

He considers his options, even as he dives back in to kiss her. They're in a cramped consulting room, with the door thankfully closed. The easiest approach, here, would probably be to bend her over the table and take her from behind, but he doesn't want to do that. If he's only going to get this one time with the woman who still haunts his dreams, he damn well intends to look at her face.

He lies her awkwardly over the table, in the end, then thrusts into her as he stands between her thighs. He tries leaning over her a bit to kiss her, sloppy and messy, all teeth and tongues. It's difficult to do that because he's got the discomfort of a sprained wrist to contend with, but he's so damn relieved to be feeling something after three long years of numb loneliness that he doesn't even care about the pain.

It doesn't last forever, and he is disappointed with himself for that. She sighs into his mouth, loud and long, clenching around his cock, then gazes up at him with a stunned expression in her eyes. That sends him spiralling over the edge, spilling inside of her, cursing the fact that _this one time_ has to be over so soon.

After all these years, it turns out he still hasn't a shred of self-control where Clarke Griffin is concerned.

He isn't done yet, though. He makes one more mistake, before this afternoon of errors is over. He allows himself, just for a second, to collapse against her chest and hold her close before he pulls away, and buckles his belt, and leaves.

…...

Clarke avoids Bellamy for the next week. Of course she does. What else is she supposed to do, after begging a former friend who now loathes her to fuck her over a med bay table as if she was his toy to bend and break?

She doesn't regret it. That's the saddest thing of all. She doesn't regret it in the slightest.

At the end of the week, her luck runs out. She presents herself in med bay for a morning shift, already running over her other tasks for the day in her mind. She may not be the chancellor, but she has more than enough to do.

Then she finally reads her patient list for the day, and her blood runs cold. Checking on Bellamy's sprained wrist is to be her last task of the morning, just before lunch.

He's running a little late when he arrives.

"Sorry." He breezes through the door, as if he hasn't a care in the world. As if they didn't have misguided sex, last time they were both here. "One of the kids didn't have a friend to go to lunch with. I had to find him a buddy."

Of course he did.

"It's fine." She lies brightly. If he can pretend that there is nothing to be awkward about, then she can pretend that, too.

"Great." He sticks his wrist out. "Here we are. It feels fine."

She examines it briskly. The swelling has subsided, and there is no sign of anything amiss.

"No sharp pain? No increased inflammation?" She asks, mask of professionalism carefully in place.

"No."

"Great. Then you're good to go. Come back next week and we'll see about taking the support off."

He's looking at her oddly, and she cannot make sense of it.

"What?" She asks, when three seconds have passed and he still has not left.

"That's it? I'm done?"

"Yeah." She shrugs. "Just a check up."

He's still looking at her strangely. In fact, she's beginning to suspect that he's staring at her mouth.

She tests her theory, steps slightly closer.

He closes the distance between them by a little more.

She looks up, in time to catching him certainly and _definitely_ staring at her mouth.

That decides it. She kisses him, urgent and greedy. She cannot afford to hang around, after all – people will ask questions, if they are still in here when his appointment time is up.

He kisses her back without hesitation. He is just as eager as last time, she is pleased to note. He tastes the same, too, and his mouth is just as warm and welcoming.

There's something different about it, though, this time round. He backs her up against the table a little more slowly, apparently aware that he caught her by surprise when he crushed her against it so firmly last week. He gives more attention to her breasts, squeezing them briefly through her clothes before he gets on with bending her over the table and making her see stars.

They're good together. That's the heartbreaking thing. She always knew they would be. Even after years of strain on their relationship, they are still adept at reading each other, still responsive to each other's reactions. She can still hear his excitement when she pinches his butt just so, and he still picks up easily enough just how much she likes it when he sucks bruises into her neck.

It doesn't last much longer than last time, pleasure crashing over her before she has even had time to judge herself for falling prey to temptation a second time around. And then Bellamy is thrusting against her one last time, and then settling onto her chest to catch his breath, just for a moment.

He pulls away and repairs his appearance, putting his clothes to rights and heading for the door.

He leaves without pointing out that _just this one time_ was a lie, and she is grateful for it.

…...

Later that week, Miller tips Bellamy the wink that he and Jackson would appreciate some alone time.

That's fine. He can deal with that. It happens, often, and he knows his routine.

It's just that he doesn't much fancy sticking to his routine, this time round. He doesn't much fancy a lonely shower – and anyway, jerking off with a sprained wrist has got to be a challenge, right?

He steels his courage, and goes to look for Clarke. He figures it's worth a try. And he figures that if he can break through his nerves, just this once, that might be the start of something good. Once or twice might be an accident, but if they have sex three times – he hopes that makes a pattern. That might make it something they keep doing.

He doesn't stop to over-analyse why he wants to keep doing it. She's hot, and he's lonely. That's that.

She is alone in her office when he arrives. He's not convinced that being in her office this late at night is a good sign, but he's here to have a half-decent orgasm, not to ask pointed questions about her wellbeing.

"Bellamy, hey. You here to talk to your sister?" She asks, looking up from her data pad.

"No. I'm here for you."

"Me?" She asks, with a rather cute confused crinkle lining her forehead.

"Come on, Clarke. You know what I mean." He hopes that he sounds more confident than he feels.

If she rejects him, now, he honestly doesn't know what he'll do.

To his relief, she nods and jumps to her feet. She crosses the distance between them, then pauses, scarcely a breath away, a provocative slant to her brow. It's like she's challenging him to be the one to beg for it, today.

Well screw that. She can stand there all damn day.

He stares back at her, frowning deeply.

He's the one who breaks, in the end. Of course he is – she always did know how to break him. He reaches out for her, grabbing at as much of her as he can get his hands around, tugging her eagerly into his arms. She moves towards him willingly – enthusiastically, even – sighing into his mouth as they finally start to kiss.

Why did she ever say this should be a one-time thing? He's beginning to think that angry sex with Clarke is the only redeeming feature of life underground.

"Where do you want me?" She pants against his mouth, rubbing up against him, tormenting him to the brink of sanity.

The honest answer is everywhere. Everywhere, and always. In his bed and in his arms. But he'd have to forgive her for that.

"Come here." He says in the end, leading her to that hideous leather chair she sits in to rule the human race.

He sits down on it, unbuckling his belt, unbuttoning his fly and letting his eager cock spring free. And then he drags her down towards him, sits her on his lap, and feels the shiver of pleasure as she slides down onto the length of him.

He doesn't understand why they didn't start doing this years ago.

She's good at being on top. Of course she is. She rides him hard, arms wrapped around his neck, pressing heated kisses to his lips.

He breaks away from the kisses after a while. Not because they're not great – they are – but because he urgently needs to bunch her shirt up and pull her breasts from the cups of her bra and swirl his tongue over her nipples.

He just needs to, OK? He just needs this moment with Clarke.

He gets there first, this time. He's disappointed with himself for that – he likes to show a girl a good time. But then he's disappointed with himself for being disappointed, because he isn't trying to show Clarke a good time. He's just lonely, and she's hot, remember?

It doesn't matter, in the end. She follows close behind him, clenching around him almost painfully before his cock has grown limp inside her.

They sit there for too long, afterwards. He wonders if maybe that was bound to start happening eventually. Neither of them speaks, but they just sit there, his cock still inside of her, feeling the last aftershocks of her orgasm as they hold each other tight and enjoy a little much-missed human contact.

He can't move first, anyway. She's sitting on top of him. So it's totally not his fault that he stays put several minutes longer than would be truly wise.

When at last she does stand up, he doesn't really want to let her go.

…...

Clarke shouldn't be feeling so damn cheerful.

She's still exhausted, still overworked. She's just found out her mother is still taking the painkillers she started taking for her headaches – even though she took her ice bath years ago. She still doesn't know how to have a civil conversation with Raven for longer than three minutes at a time, and still hasn't decided when to relax the rules on protein rationing.

But it turns out that even angry sex with Bellamy is a hell of a lot better than not having him in her life at all.

She hates herself a little, for that. She ought to be stronger than to fall so easily into such a twisted relationship with the man she's still frighteningly in love with. She knows she's only going to get hurt, sooner or later – because it is obvious that he is screwing her for very different reasons from the reasons she is so eager to be with him.

She knows all these things, but she's beginning to think that angry sex with Bellamy is the only redeeming feature of life underground.

…...

Bellamy is starting to worry. It's been a whole fortnight since he showed up unannounced at Clarke's office and they had sex for the third time. And he thought, then, that maybe they were falling into a pattern, but now with this long gap he's beginning to fear that she has thought better of the idea.

It's not that he's upset about it, or anything pathetic like that. He's just frustrated to be losing a chance at regular sexual fulfilment.

He's sitting on his bed, failing to read the Iliad. He's read it before, of course, but he figures he had better re-read it now he's started teaching the kids about it and all. Maybe Clarke was onto something when she suggested it – sure, there's a lot of fighting, but there's also loyalty and love, and he figures those might be things worth teaching the next generation about.

Miller enters the dorm with a surprising message.

"You're being summoned." He announces, tone lofty.

"What do you mean?" He wonders aloud.

"Clarke wants to see you in her office. She said to send you there."

"Did O call?" He asks, confused.

"Not that I know of. She just said to send for you."

Frowning, he gets to his feet and sets off down the corridor. Clarke only ever sends for him when she has news of his sister – but there is something about the way Miller went about it that seems to imply this isn't about a lazer-comm call from Octavia.

It all becomes clear within seconds of the moment he knocks at Clarke's office door.

"Come in." She calls, so he does.

He enters, and closes the door behind him, and stands there, waiting for his orders. That's the only other reason she would summon him, if not for a call from the Ring, right?

"Bellamy." She says his name with rather more enthusiasm than he remembers the two of them sharing in years.

He nods, still confused.

And then she jumps to her feet, and crosses the couple of yards between them, and reaches up to pull his head down into a fierce kiss.

He works it out, as he bends her over her desk and drives into her from behind, and she claws at the varnished wood with her fingernails.

He thinks that this might have become a pattern, or perhaps even an arrangement.

…...

Clarke feels self-conscious about inviting Bellamy to her office like this all the time. By _all the time_ , she means it has happened all of twice, but that's often enough that she feels anxious about it and a little distracted as she grinds against him.

"What's wrong?" He asks later, because naturally he can still read her perfectly, the infuriating man.

"It feels strange that I keep _summoning_ you, or whatever. It's screwed up, right?"

"Everything about this is screwed up." He says, sounding more sad than angry.

"I just – you can come by whenever, you know? You don't need me to order you up here every damn time."

"I like it when you beg." He teases, but she can see from the look in his eyes that he hears her, loud and clear.

…...

He gets braver, after that. He starts inviting himself to her office for a quick screw whenever the mood takes him. It seems like she gets braver, too – she sometimes throws him a heated glance across the dining room, or offers him a provocative grin when they pass in the corridor. She even gets in the habit of passing him little messages, whispering into his ear when he enters a room she is leaving that he ought to stop by her office, later, if he wants to.

He always wants to.

It's not the relationship he dreamed of having with Clarke, years ago. He used to dream of a mutually supportive close friendship, with a fair dose of tender, passionate lovemaking thrown in.

This is nothing like that. This is a grey hole in the ground, and two desperate people fucking, and occasionally sticking up for each other in front of a hostile crowd.

But still it is better than nothing.

Tiny elements of their old partnership sneak in, a little at a time, quite without his permission. He doesn't want them to be friends again, not really. That would mean forgiving her, and he's not ready for that. But they do start to talk rather more, and he thinks he likes it.

Sometimes, they even allow themselves to talk about what they're doing.

"That was good." Clarke sighs, stretched out over the couch in her office.

Bellamy is leaning up on his elbows above her, looking down at her blissful expression and feeling at least a little smug.

"Yeah?" He asks, wanting her to tell him again that it was good. Wanting her to tell him that _he_ was good, even though he knows that he doesn't deserve to hear it.

"Yeah. I like it when you're above me. Just – all of you, your weight on top of me. It feels good." She looks away, biting her lip, clearly aware that she has said too much.

He does her the favour of ignoring her slip-up. He pulls away, reclaims his clothes. Starts a trivial conversation with her about work.

He never thought they'd end up here, like this. He thinks it would have broken his heart, before Praimfaya, to know that this is how things would turn out for them. To know that the life in Clarke's eyes would grow duller and he would become so angry and bitter and twisted.

He wonders how to go about putting it right.

He thinks that, perhaps, for the first time since she locked that door, he might _want_ to put it right.

…...

Clarke is confused when Bellamy sits opposite her at breakfast. Sure, they sit at meals together all the time – but it is always her choosing a seat at his table, never this way round.

All the same, she tries for a light smile and a neutral topic of discussion.

"Hey. I see you chose the porridge." It's not a thrilling conversational opener, but it's better than nothing.

"Yeah. I never like the bread down here. It's so dense."

"It's the same recipe we had on the Ark."

"It feels more dense under the ground. Heavier, you know?" He claims with spirit.

" _Everything_ feels heavier under the ground." She says sadly, then curses herself for her ill-timed honesty.

"I know." He mutters quietly, gaze fixed on his porridge.

"I'm sorry -"

"Don't be." He cuts her off with a strained smile. "You know, I finish teaching at two this afternoon. Should I stop by then?"

"Yeah." She nods, face growing warm.

This is, without doubt, the best breakfast she has had in years. And now she even has something to look forward to all day.

…...

Bellamy's been making more effort to hang out with Clarke at meals recently. It's a silly thing, but he thinks it has been a success. It's not as if he's suddenly ready to forgive her or anything, but at least they now speak civilly outside of their hurried hookups.

He wonders what it might be like not to rush it, one day. He wonders what it might be like to have sex outside of that damn office he hates so much, and instead with all the time in the world to bring each other pleasure. Whether maybe they could forget everything that has turned their relationship sour, forget their circumstances and responsibilities, and simply be Bellamy and Clarke for a while.

That's a naive dream, isn't it?

He's not going to get a magical reconciliation. Clarke cannot undo what she has done, nor undo how he feels about what she has done. And he's not going to get romantic, fantastic lovemaking.

He sometimes manages to have a stilted conversation about his morning porridge, and that is so much better than feeling completely alone.

…...

There's something Clarke has been wondering about for a while, now, but has yet to find the courage to pursue. But then the perfect moment presents itself, when Bellamy shows up at her office late one night just as she is packing up for the day.

"I'm about done here." She takes a deep breath, summons her strength. "We could head back to my room if you want? Might be more comfortable to use a bed."

He doesn't even bat an eyelid. "Sure." He agrees, as if she has not just completely overturned the rules of their post-Praimfaya relationship.

Well, now. That was easier than she expected.

They talk a little, as they wander down the hallway to her dorm. It's pretty pleasant, all things considered. He asks after her day, she asks after his.

But then he tells her an amusing story about a girl who got upset when she thought her homework wasn't up to standard, and Bellamy spending his lunch break reading stories with the child to cheer her up. At least, it's clearly supposed to be amusing. Bellamy has an amused twist to his mouth as he shakes his head at the sweet foolishness of children. But Clarke isn't amused in the slightest – she's half way to tears, at the evidence that this complicated man who screws her like he's furious with her is apparently still capable of kindness and care.

He's just not capable of behaving like that towards her.

There's nothing she can do about that, she knows. She cannot change the fact that he always fucks her as if he wishes he wasn't addicted to it.

But maybe she can show him that she cares about him. Maybe she can treat him with kindness, even if he's not yet ready to return the favour.

She gets to work on that, when they arrive at her room. She takes his jacket gently from his shoulders, drapes it over the back of a nearby chair. She initiates a kiss, softer than usual, then pulls away to press delicate lips against his skin when things start to get more heated.

Usually, they would both rip off the bare minimum of clothing, then get on with the matter at hand, but today, she does things a little differently. She eases his T shirt over his head, follows the path of her hands with soft kisses. She even turns him around at one point, so that she can lavish some gentle affection on his back and shoulders.

To her surprise, he lets her do that. He stands there and takes it, allows her to make a fuss of him with an unreadable look on his face.

He doesn't quite respond in kind, not exactly. He doesn't kiss the back of her neck, nor offer her an impromptu shoulder massage, and that's fine. She's the one who's drowning in guilt, here. But he doesn't behave exactly like he normally would, either. He helps her out of her shirt, surprisingly gentle as he eases it carefully over her head. He places a kiss on her forehead at one point, which – well. She's pretty sure that's more affectionate than sexy.

By the time he lies her back on the bed and pushes inside of her, she's feeling more relaxed than she has done in years. And, yes, she's aware that's pathetic. She's aware that she has no self-respect, to be so soft and welcoming as a result of such pitiful crumbs of affection.

But then he kisses her, soft and deep. And he starts moving against her, a little slower than normal, one warm hand trailing over the skin of her waist as he builds up the rhythm. She can't remember the last time anyone touched her waist. Holding her there isn't strictly necessary for sex, she's pretty sure.

Holding her there has to be a _choice_.

She stops overthinking it, as he brings her closer to the edge. She relaxes, lies back against the pillow and, for the first time in years, thinks of nothing other than enjoying herself. And then she's falling apart, holding him close, burying her face in his neck and resisting the temptation to sigh his name.

He follows close behind her. That's that, she thinks. He normally stays put just long enough to catch his breath and then goes on his way.

This time, he stays for a conversation. A very brief conversation, to be sure, but a conversation nonetheless.

"You were right." He offers mildly.

"I was?"

"Yeah. It is more comfortable to use a bed."

"Maybe we should use a bed more often." She suggests carefully.

"Yeah. Let's try that."

Tonight feels like a minor miracle, in some ways. But he still gets dressed and leaves her there, alone, in her empty, haunted dorm.

…...

Bellamy tries very hard not to think about that night he first set foot in Clarke's room. He's pretty sure dwelling on it is a recipe for insanity. But try as he might, he cannot get away from it. Every time he closes his eyes, he can see the look on her face as she leaned in to kiss her way over his torso. And as he lies awake in bed at night, he cannot help but crave the feeling of her kissing and massaging his back.

It's pathetic. Just because she knows how to make him feel good, he shouldn't be so ready to roll over and think kindly of her. She's a monster. She locked his sister out to die, and broke the rules of the conclave, and betrayed his trust.

But then again, if Octavia has forgiven her, maybe he shouldn't be holding onto that any more.

He decides that the best way to deal with this is to avoid the problem altogether. It's hardly a mature or sensible response to the situation, he knows. But he's always been one for acting on emotions more than anything else. So it is that he decides he will avoid the temptation to visit her in her room until he has his feelings slightly more under control.

With that resolved, he seeks her out in her office when he is done teaching for the day.

"Clarke. Hey." He greets her as he walks in the door.

She barely looks up from her desk, and he can read even from here that her expression is tense. "Hey. Look, I'm sorry. I don't have time today. I only just finished with an emergency in med bay and I've got to figure this out before I meet Cooper at -"

"Clarke. Breathe. It's OK." He walks towards her, without allowing himself to truly acknowledge how much it hurts him to see her so distressed.

"It's really not. Can I ask you about something?"

"Sure."

"It's the guards. There are more of them than we need while we're safe down here but we don't know what it will be like on the ground. Sargent Miller says they're starting to get restless because they don't have enough to do. You know what it's like to be a guard. What do I do? Do I keep them on in case we need them in the future? Do I give them something useful to do? Most of them don't have other skills, so I don't even know what I would give them." She spreads her hands, helpless, visibly shaking with stress.

He thinks about it carefully, perches on the edge of her desk while he considers the question. She gets back to staring at her data pad, but he rather suspects she is too anxious to be taking much in from what she's reading.

"Cut down their hours and offer them training in the rest of the time. Ask them if they'd be interested in an apprenticeship in agriculture or engineering. You know we can never have too many people with some training in those areas. Some of them might even want some medical training, and then they would be better at first aid in the field when we get out of here. Everyone causes less trouble when they're excited about learning something new. And I think it would make them feel like they were getting higher status, you know? To have education in those specialist skills. It would make them feel valued." He finishes his suggestion, looks up tentatively to see if it meets with her approval.

It does meet with her approval. Not just that – she's looking at him like she used to look at him. She's got exactly the same look in her eye she had that day he wrote her name on the list – that look that says he saved her, and she loves him for it.

It makes him feel like a monster. She's trying so damn hard, and she's on the point of falling apart at the seams, and he still cannot bring himself to forgive her.

"Thanks, Bellamy. That's a really good idea."

"No problem." He gets to his feet. "I'll leave you to it. Remember to eat and sleep, OK?" He can still want her healthy, even if he cannot bring himself to make her happy.

She nods, but he's not sure she's really hearing him. "I'll see you later." She offers. "Or maybe tomorrow or the day after – I'm going to be busy for a while."

"That's OK. Let me know when you're free."

He hovers, awkward, looking between Clarke and the door. There's something he wants to try, something he thinks might not be completely out of line given the rather more tender sex they shared the other night, and the openly adoring expression he saw in her eyes just now.

Something that he thinks might make him feel like he's being less of a monster to her.

Screw it. It's worth a try. Gathering his courage, he stoops to press a gentle kiss to her cheek.

And then he walks to the door, and leaves. He doesn't dare to look back. He's not sure he could deal with seeing her reaction.

…...

Clarke has had a busy couple of weeks, so it has been a while since she spoke to Octavia. When at last she does have a moment of free time – or, more specifically, a moment of free time that is not occupied with Bellamy – she picks up the lazer-comm and gives her a call.

They exchange pleasantries for a while – news of Monty's algae, news of the healthy hydrofarm. But then Octavia gets on with introducing a topic that is clearly very much on her mind.

"You've patched things up with my brother." She states, as if it is a fact, not an incorrect opinion.

"Why? What did he say?" Clarke asks, somewhere between confused and flustered.

"Not much. But he's happier than he's been in years. He's been raving about how he's mentoring a couple of the guards who want to learn more about teaching?"

"That was his idea, not mine." Clarke cannot take the credit.

Octavia laughs, a warm sound. "But you must be talking to each other to have ended up at that, I figure."

"You might be right." Clarke concedes.

"You're doing alright, Clarke. It's going to be slow – trust me, I know my brother. He's only so hurt because he loved you so much."

"That's what hurts the most." Clarke admits, in a moment of regrettable honesty.

"I know. But you'll be OK. You two will always find your way back to each other."

…...

Bellamy wonders if this thing he has going with Clarke is starting to resemble some kind of relationship. It's a pretty odd one – they have a lot of sex, and talk increasingly often about how to run things in the bunker. But they don't really talk about themselves, their thoughts or feelings. And above all, they do not ever attempt to discuss forgiveness.

He's heading to her dorm, at the moment. She whispered an invitation in his ear as she passed him in the hallway this afternoon, and he never likes to turn her down. He knows the formula, by now – a summons, a screw, then home to his dorm again.

He knocks on the door of her room, and she calls out in welcome. When he enters, he finds that she is standing near her bed, so he strides over there, ready to pull her in for their usual urgent kiss.

To his surprise and confusion, she sits on the bed before he can get there, patting the space at her side.

"Have a seat." She offers.

He sits down. He's too puzzled by her unusual behaviour to stop and consider that he doesn't like taking orders from her.

"How was your day?" She asks.

OK. This isn't so unheard of. She wants to exchange a couple of empty sentences of greeting, and then they'll get on with the screwing. Fine.

"It was alright. You?"

"Yeah, not bad."

He nods. Pleasantries exchanged. Time for sex. He leans in, ready to kiss her.

She leans away, an earnest expression on her face. "How's your sister?" She asks.

"She's fine." He says, even more perplexed. She knows how Octavia is – he's aware that they talk quite often.

"She really loves life on the Ring, huh? You must be happy to see her living her life."

He frowns. It's not the life he had hoped for Octavia to have, trapped in a can in the sky. But Clarke is right – she does really seem happy and fulfilled. So, yeah. He's happy for her, more or less.

But he doesn't want to talk about it with Clarke. He's here to get laid.

"I guess." He says, in the end, with a shrug.

"Do you think she -"

"Clarke." He interrupts what was, no doubt, going to be another totally irrelevant comment about his sister. "We both know why we're here. Can we get on with it?"

She swallows loudly. "I just thought – we could talk for a bit first?"

"We don't do that any more." He grinds out, hating himself a little for the way her face falls at his response. He doesn't see why she should look disappointed. He's only telling the truth – they do not sit around and have meaningful conversations about his sister's wellbeing, not since Clarke showed such complete disregard for her life.

He leans in to kiss her. That seems like the best way of dealing with the devastated expression creeping over her face. He hates himself for noticing that she looks devastated, and he hates himself even more for caring.

Still more than that, he hates himself for causing it.

He tries to make it up to her, in his own small, pitiful way. He knows she likes it when he strokes her hair as they kiss, so he does that, now. Then he gets really brave and, for the first time since they started screwing, he teases her with his fingers before he gets in there with his cock. It turns out she's a big fan of that. It has her squirming and mewling, and, for a moment, he can pretend this is some lighthearted screw back at the dropship.

Then she moans his name. She goes and moans his damn _name_ , in a voice that is undeniably _Clarke_ , and reminds him that he is not that same young man, any more.

He tries not to let it get to him, but it's a lost cause. He's been dreaming of hearing Clarke moan his name for years, and the sound of it shoots straight to his cock – and his heart – and has him kissing her deeply as he screws her ever faster.

By the time she's clenching around him in completion, he's starting to think this might be the best sex they've ever had. He's starting to think that it might be the best sex _he's_ ever had, which shouldn't be possible when he's had rather happier flings with girls he doesn't detest, in easier times. But she's Clarke, isn't she? She knows how to drive him mad, even when he wishes she didn't.

He admits defeat. He gives in, and spills inside of her, with her name on his lips.

He normally sticks around for a minute or two, afterwards, just to catch his breath. Simply lying above her, holding her tight. He knows she likes to feel his weight on top of her like this.

"You good?" He asks her. He doesn't usually say anything much at this point, but somehow it feels like the right thing to do, today.

"Yeah, you?"

He grunts his agreement, and lies there a little longer, rubbing his cheek against her neck, running his fingers through her hair. He'll get up and be on his way just as soon as his heart rate is back to normal, he tells himself.

He's not sure what makes him say it. One minute he's lying there cursing Clarke's addictively soft skin, and the next thing he knows, he's talking about their friends in space, of all things.

"O says that Indra's been learning about the algae farm. She sounds really proud of her for giving it a go – I like that for her, you know? That Indra taught her so much, and now she and Monty are trying to teach Indra about technology. It's like she has a real family."

"You'll always be her family first." Clarke offers.

It feels weird to be having this conversation about his sister whilst lying on top of Clarke in a position he cannot help but think of as sexual, even though they're both done for now. So he rolls off her a little, until he seems to have ended up lying next to her in the bed with his arm slung over her chest.

"It would be OK if I wasn't her family first any more, I think." He whispers it, but he knows she can hear him loud and clear. "I didn't handle that well with Lincoln – I was scared that things would change. But she's a young woman now. She's like a daughter to Indra, and that's great. And if she finds a new partner or whatever, I'd be OK with that."

"I know that must be hard for you to say. You've done a great job raising her – I guess it's difficult to take a step back and see that she has her own life now."

He doesn't even bother being surprised that Clarke understands him so well. "Yeah. That's it exactly."

They lie there in silence for a moment. His pulse is no longer racing, but it doesn't feel right to leave quite yet. He can't leave without thanking Clarke for the thought she must have put into saying what he needed to hear, there.

"Thank you." He murmurs.

"Any time. I mean it. I – I know things aren't right between us. But I'll always be here for you."

Well, he can't leave now, can he? He can't leave when she's just said something as honest and beautiful as that.

He'll just stay a little longer. He squeezes her tighter, hoping she understands that he's trying to convey a few things he's not quite ready to say. She shuffles sideways until her head is pillowed on his chest, her hair tickling his neck.

He definitely can't leave now. He'd have to move her, disturb her rest, and he knows she needs all the rest she can get.

He never does leave, in the end. He knows that staying is stupid. He knows that it implies something he is not ready to imply, that it makes this look a lot more like a relationship and a lot less like hate sex.

He knows that staying is a recipe for more heartbreak, but he does it anyway.

…...

Clarke is expecting Bellamy to be distant, since he stayed the night at hers last night. She's expecting him to have freaked himself out by hanging around to chat and cuddle after screwing her, and so she's expecting him to back off. He certainly looked a bit distressed this morning when he woke, and dressed, and left, with hardly a word.

That's OK. She knew she was taking a risk in trying to have a conversation with him that was even vaguely personal. She had to try – for the sake of her own sanity and out of concern for him – and if it's scared him off, that's simply the price she has to pay for doing the right thing. It won't be the first time that doing the right thing has had consequences she didn't like, and she will have to harden her resolve and deal with it like she has always done.

It's just that she's going to be very lonely, if this causes him to disappear from her life again.

She needn't have worried, in the end. He shows up at her office not long after midday with an intent expression on his face.

"Bellamy. Hey."

She gets to her feet, and crosses the distance between them. She ought to make this easy for him, she figures. She ought to give him a nice no-strings-attached screw. Let him bend her over the desk, perhaps, and not try to talk about his feelings. He'll surely be embarrassed if she brings up what happened last night.

With that decided, she presses her mouth to his for their usual intense kiss.

He doesn't kiss her back. Not only that – he actually pulls away, and she is left staring at the worn carpet, disappointed and over half way to ashamed. He's never rejected her before, and she doesn't know how to handle it.

"Clarke." To her surprise, his voice is soft. And then he tucks a finger under her chin and pulls her face up until they are looking each other in the eyes.

She doesn't say anything. She searches his expression for clues, and waits for him to tell her what's going on. Is he here to tell her that their arrangement is over? Did getting too close last night show him that he can never have a relationship like that with her?

He continues speaking, voice somehow even softer. "I didn't come here for that. I came to ask if you want to grab some lunch with me. I only have half an hour until I have to get back to the school but I thought we could hang out and talk while we're eating."

She gapes at him, stunned. She cannot believe it. He wants to take her to _lunch_? He wants to eat with her, and chat with her, and voluntarily spend chaste time out in public with her?

The most shocking thing of all is that he actually looks nervous, his tense jaw and warm eyes making for a rather mismatched combination. Surely he didn't think she was about to say no? Surely he must realise that she would do anything in the world to have a slender slice of normality like this with him?

"I'd like that." She manages to say past the lump in her throat. "I'd like that _a lot_. We'd better get going or you'll be late for work."

He grins at her, and she grins right back, and the pair of them walk to lunch smiling like teenagers in love.

…...

Bellamy is beyond happy to be hanging out with Clarke again. And not just hanging out with her – after all, they've been sleeping together for months – but hanging out in a vaguely normal way. They've been eating meals together, and talking about how his sister is getting on, and sometimes he will even just sit in her office and do his lesson plans while he waits for her to finish work for the day.

He's missed her, for all that he's been in her bed for a while now. He's missed her company, and missed her laugh, and he's glad to see her learning to smile more consistently again.

But he's frustrated, too. Because it doesn't feel right to be so happy with her when he's still somewhat angry with her. They haven't talked about what happened all those years ago, and they haven't talked about forgiveness. They talk about meaningful things, sure – but without fail they are things that have meaning to other people, like his sister's life and her mother's addiction. They do not talk about the issues that really matter between them.

He speaks to Octavia about it, in the end. His frustration is beginning to rule his life, beginning to take over his mind, and discussing it with his sister seems safer than letting it burst out of him in an angry confrontation with Clarke.

"I just wish we could talk about it." He laments. "But I don't know where to start. And what if it all goes wrong and we end up worse off than we are now? At least now we can have a laugh over lunch. It's like – it's safer to ignore it and just keep screwing her." He bites out, cynical and annoyed with himself.

" _Screwing her_?" Octavia repeats, incredulous.

Damn it. He didn't mean to let that slip. Damn him, and damn his unruly emotions. He was doing so well at keeping that hidden from his sister.

"We've slept together a couple of times." He lies lightly.

"Bell." She says his name, just his name, in a warning tone that suggests she does not appreciate it when he is less than honest with her.

"More than a couple of times." He acknowledges. He swallows deeply, has a go at continuing. "It's like we're dating. We hang out all the time, we – yeah – we sleep together. And I don't want to lose that by trying to talk about what happened and getting it wrong. I don't want to scare her off by admitting I still haven't forgiven her."

"She's not an idiot, big brother. She knows you haven't forgiven her. She loves you anyway. You just have to be brave and start that difficult conversation."

"You think it'll be OK?"

"Yeah. You got this. And Bell?"

"Yeah?"

"Never tell me about your sex life again."

…...

Clarke is at breaking point. It's silly because she's happy to be spending time with Bellamy again – really she is – but it's driving her mad that he keeps ignoring the issues that really matter. Every time they talk about his sister or his lessons or the food over breakfast, she comes a little closer to screaming from sheer frustration.

She just wants him to be honest with her. They always used to be able to have the difficult conversations, back before she broke things between them.

She tries to cling to her self-control. She's always been good at putting a brave face on things before now. But she's seriously struggling, here – her mother is still slowly weaning herself off those pills, her job is a nightmare, and the one person she always used to count on doesn't even have the decency to tell her what he honestly thinks of her.

And yet he seems to be spending almost every free minute with her, talking cheerfully about a good deal of nothing.

"Clarke. Hey." He strides into her office at lunch time as if he owns the place. "I hear it's your favourite bean stew today. Oh, and did I tell you, Murphy invited me to hang out in the rec room tonight? I know you must be busy but – you know – you could join us if you like?"

No. That's it. That's her snapping. She will not sit here and listen to him invite her on what sounds suspiciously like a date when they still haven't so much as acknowledged that she locked that door four years ago.

"Are we ever going to talk about it?" She asks, sharp.

"What?" He looks confused.

"You're furious with me, but you keep sleeping with me and inviting me to lunch and -"

"I'm not furious any more." He interrupts her quietly.

"You're not?" That's news to her.

"No. Not because I've forgiven you. Not yet. But just because – it was a long time ago, OK? I'm tired of being that angry all the time. I've never been much good at staying angry with you." He gives a slightly sad smile as he steps towards her.

She shakes her head. "This isn't like after Mount Weather though. I didn't just leave you. I locked your sister out to die."

"But she's _not dead_." He points out, closing the distance between them. "And neither are we. And maybe I want to stop talking about this and make the most of life while we can."

With that, he starts kissing her. And normally that's great – she likes kissing him. But that's not what she wants today. She just wants an honest conversation – a chance to apologise for hurting him, to explain herself. A chance for him to vent all those feelings he's been bottling up for years.

She pulls away, shaking her head. "No. Sorry. I can't."

He swallows, nods his head.

She tries one more time. "I just want to talk about -"

He storms out of the room, slamming the door as he goes.

…...

Bellamy is furious with himself. He doesn't think he's ever been so angry in his life. He had the perfect opportunity, there. That was his chance to talk things through with Clarke – she even initiated the conversation.

That was his chance, and he blew it.

He got scared, and ran like a coward. He just doesn't know how to find the strength to look into the eyes of a woman he's fast realising he's still in love with and tell her he can't forgive her, and isn't sure he ever will. He's got no idea how to choose the words to explain the conflicted situation he finds himself in – that he needs her in his life, that he's happier with her, but that he still hasn't managed to come to terms with what she did.

He spends the rest of the day wondering how to make things right, mustering the courage to try again. He's never lacked courage before, as far as he can remember, but in his defence this is a pretty unusual situation.

He practises some words in his mind. He heads to the hydrofarm, and asks Kara Cooper's permission to salvage the latest cuttings from her attempts at pruning. He binds them together into a bouquet – it's a pretty hideous bouquet, if he does say so himself, but he figures it's the closest he can manage right now to the kind of romantic gesture he has read about in old Earth literature.

He feels mildly ridiculous as he shuffles nervously to Clarke's room with his stupid tomato flowers clutched in his fist. But he resolves that feeling ridiculous is better than feeling guilty, or lonely, or disappointed in himself.

He summons his courage and knocks at the door of her dorm.

She answers it right away, looking surprised to see him there.

"These are for you." He thrusts the sad flowers towards her. "Sorry they're not the greatest. Not a lot of options for flowers round here."

She stops looking surprised, then, and starts looking outright shocked instead. She takes the bouquet with tentative hands, staring at those pathetic cuttings as if she cannot believe they are real.

He clears his throat, and has a go at saying what he came here to say. "I'm sorry. You were right, earlier. We should talk about it. It's just – that's hard for me. I'm sorry for reacting the way I did but I guess I was scared. I'm worried that if we talk about it – what if this goes away?" He gestures between the two of them, between her awestruck face, and the stupid wilting flowers, and his chest, where his heart is pounding in fear.

She's looking at him intently, tears welling in her eyes, biting her lip slightly. And then, all at once, she's hugging him, arms going right around his waist, squeezing him tight, as she rests her head against his chest.

He hasn't had a proper Clarke hug in years. It's stupid – they sleep together all the time. But this is a hug that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with care, and concern, and companionship, and all the other things they used to share, a lifetime ago, above ground.

"I won't let that happen." She tells him fiercely, and he believes her.

They hug for a long time, and when they separate again, he notices that the flowers are in an even more sorry state, clutched in her hand all along.

She goes to sit on her bed, taking his hand and dragging him with her as she goes. They sit side by side, thighs touching, each gazing at their own lap.

He can do this.

He takes a deep breath and starts to speak. "It's not really about O any more. She's safe for now – probably safer than she's ever been. But I still can't forget how I felt when I realised we were on different sides, you and me. I thought we were... close. So it was hard to watch you put her in danger when you knew that would hurt me more than anything. It makes it difficult for me to trust you again." He looks up in time to see her nodding, drinking in his words, eager to understand.

"I get that." She says damply. "It was the hardest decision I've ever made, for that reason, and I'm sorry I hurt you. I never _meant_ to hurt you, Bellamy. But I knew that I would. I honestly believed I had to shut that door. I still believe it."

"If you had to choose again, you'd choose the same thing." He concludes sadly.

"Yeah. Even though I know, now, how much it hurts to have you hate me. But because – don't you see? I have to put everyone else's survival above my feelings. Above how much I need to be on good terms with you."

He snorts. "Good to know you've got your priorities straight."

"Bellamy -"

"No. I get it. That's who you are. You get burdened with these impossible choices, and then you feel awful about them afterwards, even when you're sure you did the right thing. That's you." He swallows painfully. "I'm just so tired of being angry with you, Clarke. And I'm tired of seeing you hurting too. I want to try to learn to trust you again."

Because she is Clarke, she doesn't dodge the difficult questions. "And what about the next time I make a decision you don't like? What then? What if we open that door and face another problem that sets us on opposite sides? Will you take it personally the next time? And the next?"

"It was _personal_. She's my sister."

"But that's not why I did what I did. I didn't mean it to be personal." She sounds half way to hysteria, sad and angry and hurt all at once, as she spreads her hands in a hopeless gesture.

He puts an arm around her, pulling her close into his side, and tries for a comforting tone. He hates to see her like this. "I know you didn't. I can see that now. And I guess – the next time it happens, I'll try to keep my head straight and remember it's not personal. And I'll try to remember everything that's good when we're on the same side, and I'll try to trust that we'll always find our way back to each other."

"You make it sound so easy."

"I know it's _not_ easy. But isn't it worth it?"

She nods, slightly desperately, and subsides into quiet tears against his shoulder.

They sit like that for a long moment. He was right to be scared in some ways, it turns out. That conversation was painful. But he was wrong to fear that it would tear them apart – he's absolutely convinced that it has bound them tighter together.

At length, she starts to sit up and pull away from his side. He doesn't much like the sound of that – he squeezes her a little tighter, encourages her to keep nestling her head on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry." She says at last. "You didn't come here to watch me cry. You must be keen to – to get on with it."

He shakes his head, which has the distracting side effect of rubbing his cheek against her hair. "I didn't come here just for the sex, either. I came here to give you a pathetic bunch of flowers and try to put things right."

She gives a damp chuckle, and snuggles more deeply into his side. "Thank you. The flowers could have been worse."

He grins, nuzzles into her hair a little more. He'd happily stay like this all night, he thinks. He doesn't feel the need to distract himself by screwing her, not now that they've cleared the air and he feels he's allowed to be close to her in other ways, too. More meaningful ways, built out of cuddles and caring and crumpled tomato flowers.

"Let's get some sleep." He suggests now. "Sex can wait till the morning."

"You're staying over?" She asks, and he thinks she sounds excited about that idea.

"Yeah. If that's OK?"

"Always."

After all that fear, and all that heartbreak, it turns out to be the best night's sleep he's had in years.

…...

Clarke tries really hard, over the weeks and months that follow. She puts all of her precious spare time and energy into making her relationship with Bellamy the best it can be. She still doesn't have a lot of spare time, to be fair, but she does have a lot more energy since she's started feeling rather happier.

She's never really been anyone's girlfriend before. She supposes that's what she is now – she seems to be in an exclusive relationship that involves hanging out and snuggly sleepovers and a good deal of sex. So she wouldn't necessarily know what she was doing, even if this were a normal relationship.

But it's not, of course. They may have cleared the air, but she knows she still doesn't have his forgiveness, not yet.

She tries not to dwell on that. She tries to show him that he can trust her, and that she values his happiness. That takes many different forms – sometimes it's about being honest with him on political subjects and asking for his opinion, sometimes it's about waking him up with a lazy blowjob in the morning.

She tries to give him gifts, too, but that's difficult in a bunker. She feels like he's winning on this count because of those flowers he brought her, all those weeks ago, so she needs to up her game.

She settles on giving him sketches, in the end. Sketches of his sister, sketches of the dropship. Sketches of any part of their shared history she thinks might mean something to him.

She's drawn him, today. She supposes that might make him a little self-conscious, but she figures it'll be worth it, if it shows him how much he means to her. They're sitting in her dorm room together, and he's reading a book while she sketches.

"Bellamy." She whispers his name, trying to catch his attention.

"Hmm?" He looks up from his book, eyes warm.

"I drew something for you." She holds it out to him.

He takes it from her, expression unreadable. His eyes still look warm, but he's also frowning a bit, and she's not sure what she's done wrong.

"Don't you like it?" She asks, irrationally upset at the thought. Heaven knows she hasn't anything else to give him – a few sorry sketches and a rather tired heart are the best she can do.

His eyes dart up to meet hers. "It's great. You know I like your drawings. It's just – you don't have to give me them all the time. They're yours."

"I like to." She argues.

"OK. But – remember I don't need gifts, OK? All I really need is you." He tells her, smiling a broad smile.

She's always liked his smile.

…...

Bellamy enjoys Clarke sucking him off. That's just as well, because she's been doing an awful lot of it recently. And it feels great, her soft lips sliding over the length of him, and he definitely gets off on being able to see the curves of her butt sticking up in the air while she bends over him.

But all the same, he's getting sick of it. Not sick of the cock-sucking, but sick of what he's pretty sure it means.

So it is that, tonight, he knits a hand through her hair but not to pull her closer, deeper. Rather he eases her face up and away from him so he can talk to her properly.

"You don't need to do that, you know."

"I want to." She pouts.

He sighs. He doesn't want to hurt her – that's the most important thing. But he really does want her to stop playing the martyr to his happiness.

"You don't need to keep doing this, Clarke. The blowjobs and the gifts and asking my opinion every five seconds. I don't _want_ you to do it. I don't want you to think you have to try so hard." He swallows, uncomfortable. "I fell in love with you the first time round for who you actually are, not because you were trying."

She looks stunned, blinking foolishly up at him.

That's when he realises it. He just admitted he used to love her.

"Bellamy -"

"That can't honestly be a surprise to you, Clarke. Not after all these years." He looks away, suddenly nervous of what he might see in her gaze.

"No. I guess not. Just – thank you for telling me. It still means a lot, even though I know – things are different now."

He's not sure about that. He's not sure things are so different – he's pretty convinced he still loves her, actually. Or maybe loves her _again_. But he's not quite ready to say it, yet. He's not quite ready to put his heart out there for her to break once more.

"No problem." He grunts, because really, how else is he supposed to reply to that?

"You know, I fell in love with you for who you are, too." She tells him, tone conversational.

It doesn't escape him that she doesn't say she ever stopped.

He can't think about that, now. That way lies madness. They have a few months in this concrete coffin yet, to work out whether they're ready to talk about love. For now, he figures, he can at least _show_ her how he feels. He thinks he used to do that, once upon a time. He seems to remember that showing rather than telling her his love was what he had in mind when he wrote her name on that list, or held her hand as she went into the City of Light.

Maybe he ought to have a go at learning how to do that again.

He reaches for her, gathers her into his arms in a gentle embrace. He makes a start on kissing her, but not only heated kisses to the mouth. He gives plenty of affection and soft attention to her neck and cheeks, too, and even to her eyelids.

At one point he finds himself kissing away a stray tear.

He tries to keep it gentle, careful, loving. He lies her back on the bed, hovers over her with smile he hopes looks affectionate rather than only aroused.

"You look beautiful." He tells her. He figures he ought to mention that more often, really. He doesn't think he's ever actually said it outright in all the time they've been sleeping together.

She blushes. Clarke Griffin, leader of the human race, actually blushes bright red because her boyfriend has finally got his act together to tell her she's beautiful.

"Thanks." She murmurs softly. "You, too."

He feels his cheeks heat at that, which is silly – but kind of wonderful all the same. And then he gets back on with kissing her, and with teasing her with his fingers, and with trying to show her even a fraction of the feelings he has for her.

She sighs softly when he eases inside of her, taking his time, kissing her all the while. Her sighs grow louder as he takes her closer, and her kisses greedier, and her hands on his back more urgent.

"Feels good." She dares to murmur at one point, which is new.

He remembers a day long ago, on that couch in her office, desperately wishing she'd tell him he was good. He's wishing for something else now – he's wishing he could go back and tell that rather angrier Bellamy that it all turns out more or less OK, in the end.

It turns out more than OK, today. Clarke has his name on her lips as she falls apart, and he groans into her mouth as he tumbles, starstruck, over the edge.

"That was great." She tells him, when they are curled up together afterwards. "Thanks."

"Don't thank me." He swallows, wonders how to go about saying some small portion of the truth. "That was great for me, too. I'm really happy we're together, you know? Happier than I ever thought I could be down here."

"Me too." She tells him, pressing one last goodnight kiss to his lips.

He goes to sleep that night smiling. In fact, he's still smiling when he wakes up the next morning in Clarke's bed.

…...

Clarke cannot believe that this is real.

She's sitting on the edge of her bed, watching Bellamy walk through the door with a small backpack of his belongings. And that's not so unusual, in some ways – he pops by all the time.

There's a difference this time. That backpack contains the last of his possessions – a precious copy of the _Iliad_ and a handful of her drawings. She knows, because she helped him pack it. She helped him pack it, because that's what you do, when your boyfriend is moving in with you.

He's moving in with her. This is it. His things live in her room, now. Because now it is _their_ room.

If someone had told her, four and a half years ago, that they would end up here, she would have laughed in their face. And then she would have stopped laughing, and given way to frantic tears, devastated at the mess she had made of their relationship by making that one impossible decision.

But it's real. Bellamy is really here, setting his backpack down by the bed, stooping to kiss her on the lips. And now he's really urging her down onto the bed, hovering over her, still kissing her softly.

"You going to welcome me to my new dorm?" He asks, eyes bright, as he pulls away just far enough to hold a conversation.

"You've got to be at training in twenty minutes." She argues, aware that she sounds less than convincing.

"Then you should welcome me to my new dorm _quickly_." He recommends, and gets back on with kissing her.

…...

Bellamy loves living with Clarke.

Miller and Jackson were great dorm mates, and they're still his good friends. But it doesn't even compare to knowing that Clarke is there first thing in the morning, every morning, and that her voice is always the last thing he will hear before he falls asleep at night.

He knows it's a bit weird that he's gone and moved in with her when they still haven't managed to talk about love or forgiveness. He knows that's a bit out of order. But he and Clarke have always done things their own way – running a society together before they were allies, sleeping together before they were friends once more.

Besides which, he thinks he might try talking about forgiveness, soon. He figures he ought to do it before his sister returns at the end of the five years. If he waits for his sister to come back safely before he tells Clarke she's forgiven, that feels like cheating, somehow. He thinks it's not true forgiveness if he only offers it once his sister is safely home, effectively removing the issue he was upset about in the first place.

He wants to forgive Clarke before then for selfish reasons too. He wants to be able to make love to her without feeling guilty. He wants to be able to tell her how he feels about her without anything holding him back.

He loves her, pure and simple. Living with her, sleeping with her, laughing with her – these are the things he used to dream of, on the ground, and somehow they feel all the sweeter now that they've been through such a rough patch along the way.

"What's on your mind?" Clarke asks him, looking up at him from where she lies with her head in his lap.

He shakes his head. "Nothing worth sharing. How was your day?"

"Not bad. Murphy stopped by to invite us to hang out in the rec room tonight."

"Do you want to hang out in the rec room?" He asks. He'll happily do whatever will bring her the most joy.

She considers it for scarcely a moment. "Not really. I'd rather stay in with you. I could sketch, you could read?"

"I could distract you." He adds, bending to kiss her on the lips. It's an awkward angle, but so very worth it. "That sounds like a perfect evening."

They've had a lot of perfect evenings, this month.

…...

It's a perfectly normal evening in their room when it happens. Clarke is drawing Bellamy's face – even after all these years, she never gets the jawline quite right. Bellamy is perusing the Iliad, and reading out loud to her all the parts he likes the most. They seem to be the parts where Achilles completely loses the plot, but she doesn't like to argue. She loves Bellamy, and if he has terrible taste in evening entertainment, she won't hold it against him.

"What are you looking forward to most, when we get out of here?" She asks him idly, as she sketches. "I can't wait to take a swim. Something tells me you're more excited about eating boar."

He grins at her, a brave attempt at an amused expression, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes.

"Bellamy?" She reaches a hand out to his thigh, concerned.

"I forgive you." He breathes, as if letting out a relieved sigh.

She feels the tears spring to her eyes right away, but she battles on. "You don't have to say that if you're not ready."

"I am ready. I'm more than ready. I've forgiven you. You were doing what you thought was right." He pauses a moment. "What I'm most looking forward to when we get out of here is starting a life on the ground with you."

She gasps in shocked delight. She figures there's only one good answer to that.

"I love you." She tells him, quite but confident.

"I love you, too." He doesn't even hesitate to say it back to her. All these years, and all that conflict, and it sounds like the words come as naturally to him as breath.

She kisses him, hard and fast, almost a repeat of the first kiss they shared in its intensity. But there are some key differences, too. He does not back her up against a table, this time round. Rather, he lies back on the bed, and pulls her down on top of him. The urgency between them doesn't stem from anger or desperation, this time. It's more enthusiasm, and passion, and heady desire.

She straddles him, confident in a way she could not have dreamed of being confident in the beginning, and eases down onto the length of him. He's grinning at her even as she does so, joy and love shining in his eyes so bright she's not quite sure how she missed it before.

And then it gets better. Then he starts whispering her name, murmuring compliments as he runs his hands over her skin.

Then he starts telling her he loves her.

She cries. It's pathetic and ill-timed and most of all _silly_ , but there are tears rolling down her cheeks even as she rides him to the brink of pleasure.

"I'm sorry." She murmurs, a little embarrassed. "They're happy tears."

He reaches for her hand and holds it tight. That's what he's always done for her – he has always given her something to hold onto, a point of contact to keep her grounded in a crazy world.

"You're OK. Cry all the happy tears you need to. I've got you." He murmurs, squeezing her fingers.

"Thank you."

"What for?" He sounds genuinely confused, and that almost makes her love him even more. He really doesn't see how much he means to her.

"Everything."

He's somehow still smiling as he spills inside of her, his sheer joy winning out over his grimace of pleasure.

…...

Bellamy can't believe his luck. He also can't believe it took him this long to come to terms with everything that went wrong between him and Clarke, but he figures there's no point in dwelling on it, now. All he can do is look to the future, rather than fretting about the past.

He looks to the future with excitement. He meant what he said to Clarke, about starting a life on the ground with her. He has dreams of a brood of freckle-cheeked children, and nights spent telling stories around the campfire. Most of all he has dreams of Clarke happy, and healthy, and never again looking so tired or stressed as she did those first few years in this bunker.

He knows things won't always be easy between them. He knows that making unpopular decisions is an occupational hazard of Clarke's calling in life. But next time she does something that is hard to swallow, he plans to use his head and look at it as objectively as possible. He will try not to take it personally, but rather to see why she thinks she is making the smart move. And he knows she has learnt from their shared heartbreak, as well. She still makes tough choices, but these days, she asks for input from other people, too. She tries to be sensitive to the opinions of others, tries to balance humanity with saving the human race.

Opening the door is almost anticlimactic, after all these years. He figures that serves him right for holding onto that grudge he had against Clarke for closing it. She's by his side, now, as they step out into the fresh air.

That's how it's supposed to be – the two of them, sticking together.

His sister has already beaten them to it. She's standing at Indra's side, Raven at her other shoulder. She sees them emerge and rushes forwards, engulfing him in a hug so fierce he can scarcely breathe.

"Welcome home." He whispers, holding her tight.

"It's good to be back." She says, as if she really means it.

She hugs Clarke next. They're not on opposite sides of the door any more, these two young women who mean the world to him. They're family, now, swaying on the spot a little as they embrace.

Octavia looks well, he thinks. If he's being honest, she looks better than he has ever seen her. She's physically fit and healthy, yes, but she also moves with a lightness and confidence beyond anything he could ever have imagined, when she was growing up as an illegal second child under the floor.

She stops hugging Clarke eventually, and steps back to take in the pair of them. He seems to have ended up wrapping an arm around Clarke's shoulders in the meantime, but in his defence, that's basically instinct by now. He always feels more comfortable, when she's close enough to touch.

"It's good to see you happy, big brother." Octavia whispers, voice thick with emotion.

"Thanks, O. You too. What do you say we try to keep it that way?"

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Let me know if you have any other time jump requests - I have Bellamy and Wells becoming besties on the Ring and Bellamy seeing visions of Clarke on my to do list for the next couple of weeks!


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